CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSVAAL.—ANNEXATION.
I HAVE endeavoured in the last chapter to tell very shortly the story of the South African Republic and to describe its condition at the moment when our Secretary of State at home took the unusual step of sending a British Commissioner,—not with orders to take possession of the land but with orders which have been held to justify the act when done. I doubt whether there is a precedent for so high-handed a deed in British history. It is as though the rulers of Germany were to say that in their opinion the existence of a Switzerland in Europe was deleterious and dangerous, and that therefore they would abolish Switzerland as a Republic, and annex its territory. It will be said that the case would be different because Switzerland is well governed and prosperous. But the Germans in such a case would say that they thought otherwise,—which is what we say here,—and that they therefore took it. It was we who found fault with the management of that other Republic and we who have taken possession of the land. It is well that the whole truth as to the matter should be understood. If we had done this act in compliance with the expressed wish of the inhabitants generally, that would be a justification. But it cannot fairly be said that such was the case here. A nation with a popular parliament can only be held to express its opinion to another nation by the voice of its parliament;—and the Volksraad of the Transvaal was altogether opposed to the interference of Great Britain. I will touch upon this matter again presently when alluding to the words of the Commission given to the British Commissioner by the Secretary of State at home;—but I think it must be acknowledged that no other expression of opinion, unless it be a general rising of a people, can be taken as national. In nine cases out of ten petitions ought to be held to mean nothing. They cannot be verified. They show the energy of the instigators of the petition and not of the petitioners. They can be signed by those who have and by those who have not an interest in the matter. The signatures to them can be readily forged. At home in England the right of petitioning is so dear to us from tradition that we still cling to it as one of the bulwarks of our freedom; but there cannot be a statesman, hardly a Member of Parliament among us, who does not feel that pen and ink and agitating management have become so common that petitions are seldom now entitled to much respect.
It may perhaps be said that we have repeatedly done the same thing in India. But a little thinking will show that our Indian annexations have been quite of a different nature. There we have gone on annexing in opposition to the barbarism and weakness of native rule against which our presence in India has, from the first, been a protest. Each annexation has been the result of previous conquest and has been caused by non-compliance with the demands of the conquerors. In the Transvaal we have annexed a dominion which was established by ourselves in express obedience to our own requisitions, which was in the possession of European rulers, which was altogether independent, and as to the expediency of annexing which we have had nothing to guide us but our own judgment and our own will. It is as though a strong boy should say to a weak one, “It is better that I should have that cricket bat than you,” and should therefore take it.
The case will seem to be still stronger if it shall appear, as I think it will, that Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the Commissioner appointed to this work, did what he did do without complete authority. It is evident that there was doubt in the Colonial Office at home. The condition of the Transvaal was very bad. Slavery was rampant. The Natives were being encouraged to rebellion. The President was impotent. The Volksraad was stiff-necked and ignorant. There was no revenue, no order, no obedience. The Dutch seemed to have forgotten even the way to fight. What were we to do with such neighbours,—for whose inefficiency we were in a measure responsible, having ourselves established the Republic? That we must interfere for our own protection in regard to the Natives seemed to be necessary. As has been said so often, there was a house on fire next door to us, in the flames of which we might ourselves be enveloped. Remonstrances had been frequent and had been altogether ineffectual. The Republic was drifting,—nay, had drifted into Chaos. If any other people could have assisted us in putting out the fire, French, Germans, or Italians,—so that we might not seem to tyrannise,—it would have been so comfortable! But in South Africa we had none to help us. And then though this Republic was more than half Dutch it was also only less than half English.
Something must be done; and therefore an order was sent out directing Sir Theophilus Shepstone to go to Pretoria and see what he could do. Sir Theophilus was and for many years had been Minister for Native Affairs in the Colony of Natal, and was credited,—no doubt correctly,—with knowing more about the Natives than any other European in South Africa. He was a man held in special respect by the King of the Zulus, and the King of the Zulus was in truth the great power whom both Dutch and English would dread should the natives be encouraged to rebel. When men have talked of our South African house being in danger of fire, Cetywayo the King of the Zulus has been the fire to whom they have alluded. So Sir Theophilus started on his journey taking his Commission in his pocket. He took a small body of policemen with him as an escort, but advisedly not a body that might seem by its number to intimidate even so weak a Government as that of the South African Republic.
The writing of the Commission must have been a work of labour, requiring much thought, and a great weighing of words. It had to be imperative and yet hemmed in by all precautions; giving clear instruction, and yet leaving very much to the Commissioner on the spot who would have his work to do in a distant country not connected with the world by telegraph wires. The Commission is long and I will not quote it all; but it goes on to say that “if the emergency should seem to you to be such as to render it necessary, in order to secure the peace and safety of Our said Colonies and of Our subjects elsewhere that the said territories, or any portion or portions of the same, should provisionally and pending the announcement of Our pleasure, [4] be administered in Our name and on Our behalf, then and in such case only [4] We—” authorize you to annex so much of any such territories as aforesaid.
But the caution against such annexing was continued much further. “Provided first—that”—no such annexation shall be made—“unless you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants thereof, or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature thereof [4] desire to become Our subjects, nor if any conditions unduly limiting Our power and authority are sought to be imposed. And secondly, that, unless the circumstances are such as in your opinion to make it necessary to issue a Proclamation forthwith, no such Proclamation shall be issued by you until the same has been submitted to and approved by——” the Governor of the Cape Colony, all whose titles are given at great length.
Could anything be more guarded, or less likely one would say on the mere perusal of the document, to lead to an immediate and permanent annexation of the whole country. The annexation if made at all was to be provisional only and pending the Queen’s pleasure, and then it was only to be made if the inhabitants, or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature should wish it. What the sufficient number might be was left to the discretion of the Commissioner. But he was only to do this in compliance with the wishes of the people themselves. He was to take temporary possession,—only temporary possession,—of a part of the Transvaal should the people desire it, and in the event of such a measure being approved by a distant Governor,—unless the circumstances were such as to make him think it expedient to do it without such approval. Such was the nature of the Order, and I think that any one reading it before the event would have said that it was not intended to convey an authority for the immediate and permanent annexation of the whole country.
But Sir Theophilus, after a sojourn of ten weeks at Pretoria, in which the question of the annexation was submitted to the Volksraad and in which petitions and counter-petitions were signed, did annex the whole country permanently, without any question of provisional occupation, and without, as far as I have been able to learn, any sanction from the Governor of the Cape Colony. As to conditions limiting Her Majesty’s power, the mere allusion to such a condition of things seems to be absurd now that we know what has been done. “Now therefore I do ... proclaim and make known that from and after the publication hereof the territory heretofore known as the South African Republic ... shall be, and shall be taken to be, British territory.” These are the words which contain the real purport of the Proclamation issued by Sir Theophilus Shepstone at Pretoria on 12th April, 1877. Was ever anything so decided, so audacious, and apparently so opposed to the spirit of the instructions which the Commissioner had received? When the Secretary of State received a telegram from Madeira, the nearest telegraph station, saying that the Transvaal had been annexed, which he did in the following May, he surely must have been more surprised than any other man in England at what had been done.
Was the deed justifiable? Has it been justified by what has occurred since? And if so how had come about a state of things which had made necessary a proceeding apparently so outrageous? The only man I have met in all South Africa who has questioned the propriety of what has been done is Mr. Burgers, the ousted President. Though I have discussed the matter wherever I have been, taking generally something of a slant against Sir Theophilus,—as I must seem to have done in the remarks I have just made, and to which I always felt myself prompted by the high-handedness of the proceeding,—I have never encountered even a doubtful word on the subject, except in what Mr. Burgers said to me. And Mr. Burgers acknowledged to me, not once or twice only, that the step which had been taken was manifestly beneficial, to the Natives, to the English,—and to the Dutch. He thought that Sir Theophilus had done a great wrong,—but that the wrong done would be of great advantage to every one concerned. He made various complaints;—that the Natives around him had been encouraged to rebel in order that an assumed difficulty might be pleaded;—that no national petition, and indeed no trustworthy petition, had been sent forward praying for annexation;—that the deed was uncalled for and tyrannical;—and that the whole proceeding was one in which the courtesy due to a weaker nation was neglected and omitted. He then asserted that fresh emigrants would not flock into a land governed under a European crown as they would have done into a Republic. But he repeated his admission that for Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives as at present settled in the country, the British rule would be the best.
He alleged as to himself that when Sir Theophilus stated to him his intentions, three courses appeared to be open to him. He might use his influence and his words in assisting the transference of the country to the British. This as President of the Republic he could not do;—and the less so as he did not think that it should be done. Or he might cause Sir Theophilus and his twenty-five policemen to be marched back over the border, treating them on their way as unauthorized intruders. This he would not do, he said, because he knew it to be useless to wage war with Great Britain. Or he might yield and remonstrate;—yield to power while he remonstrated against injustice. This, he said, that he did do. The words and personal bearing of the man recommended themselves to me much. Whether he is to be regarded as a banished patriot or a willing placeman must depend on a delicate question which has not as far as I know yet been answered, though it has been broached,—to which, delicate as it is, I will refer again before I have ended my story.
I had not the pleasure of meeting Sir Theophilus and have the less repugnance therefore to surmise the condition of his mind when he received the order to go to Pretoria. Had he told me his mind I might have been unable to publish my own surmises. He knew that the native races of the Transvaal unless convinced of the superiority of their white neighbours would ever struggle to prove them inferior,—and that such inferiority if proved would at once be their death-warrant. The Natives had long learned to respect the English and to hate the Dutch;—but even that respect would not restrain them if once they had asserted their masterhood to a white race. And now this state of things was at hand. He was aware that though English troops could be supplied to maintain English authority, English troops would not be lent to fight the battles of the Dutch. There might, nay there probably would be, a native triumph just across our borders which he as a minister in Natal could not interfere to quell,—but which, when a rumour of it should spread among the Zulus on our border, might induce 300,000 coloured subjects to think that they could free themselves by a blow from 20,000 white masters. And he knew the condition which I have attempted to explain,—that these Dutch people in the Transvaal would not pay a stiver of tax, that there was in fact no government, that the gaols were unlocked in order that prisoners might find elsewhere the bread which their gaolers could not get for them, that the posts could not be continued because the Contractors were not paid, that no one would part with a coin which he possessed, that property was unsaleable, that industry was unprofitable, that life was insecure, that Chaos was come upon the land. I do not suppose that Sir Theophilus doubted much when he read the Commission which had been sent to him, or that he thought very much of all the safeguards and provisions. He probably felt, as did everybody else, that the South African Republic had from the first been a failure,—almost a farce,—and that the sooner so expensive a failure could be brought to an end, the better. If indeed the Volksraad would have voted their own extermination that would have been very well; but he could hardly have expected it. As for petitions, and the wish of a “sufficient number” of the inhabitants,—I should imagine that he must have been a little indifferent to that. His mind probably was made up,—with a resolve to give the Volksraad what time might be needed for their deliberations. They did not deliberate,—only deliberated whether they would deliberate or not, and then declined even to deliberate. Whereupon Sir Theophilus said that then and from thenceforth the Transvaal should be British property. So he put up the Queen’s flag;—and the Transvaal is and probably will remain British property.
I have to acknowledge, with all my sympathies strongly opposed to what I call high-handed political operations, that I think Sir Theophilus was justified. A case of such a kind must in truth be governed by its own merits, and cannot be subjected to a fixed rule. To have annexed only a part of the Transvaal would have been not only useless, but absurd. Not only would the part which we had spared have been hostile to us, but the Dutch within our assumed borders would have envied the independence we had left to others. We shall have trouble enough now in settling our boundaries with the Natives. We should then have had the worse trouble of settling them with the Dutch. To have waited for authority from the Governor of the Cape Colony would have shown a weakness in his own authority which might have been fatal to Sir Theophilus as he was then placed. No other Governor could know the condition of the matter as well as he did. To get the authority needed he must have wasted six weeks during which it would have been known to every member of the Volksraad that he was waiting. To carry him through it was needed that the Boers should understand that when he said that the land should be annexed, Great Britain was saying so. They did so believe. The President so believed. And therefore the surrender was made without a struggle.
So much for Sir Theophilus and his instructions. In the larger matter which regards Great Britain and her character, we have to enquire whether this arbitrary act has been justified by what has occurred since. In discussing this there are at least four parties concerned, if not more. Mr. Burgers spoke of three, and in South Africa it is natural that reference should be made to those three only. As regards the Natives there can be no question. No friend of theirs can wish it to be otherwise unless they have a friend so foolish as to desire for them an independence which can be obtained only by the extermination or banishment of the European races. That the Natives generally respect the English and do not respect the Dutch is certain. This had come to such a pitch in the Transvaal that it had produced war,—and that war if continued would have meant the destruction of the tribe which was waging it. Permanent success against white men is impossible for Natives in South Africa. Every war between a tribe and its white neighbours ends in the destruction of the tribe as an independent people. And here, if Secocoeni had been successful against the Dutch,—if the English could have allowed themselves to sit by and see the house all in flames,—Cetywayo, the King of the Zulus, would at once have been at war with Secocoeni. As far as the Natives were concerned, it would indeed have been to “let slip the dogs of war.” It has been one of our great objects in dealing with the Natives,—perhaps that in accomplishing which we should be most proud of what we have done,—to save the tribes from being hounded on to war among themselves by their Chiefs. The Dutch rule in the Transvaal was an incentive to war which was already operating. The house was on fire and could only have been put out by us.
As to the good done to the English of the Transvaal it is hardly necessary that any arguments should be used. We had abandoned the country to Dutch rule in 1852, and it was natural that the Dutch should consider only themselves—and the Natives. After what we had done we clearly had no right to take back the Transvaal by force in order that we might protect the interests of Englishmen who were living there. But it is matter of additional satisfaction that we have been enabled to re-establish a basis of trade in the country;—for the trade of the country has been in the hands of English, Germans, or newly arrived Hollanders, and not in those of the Boers to whom the country was given up. I do not remember to have found a shop or even an hotel all through the Transvaal in the hands of a Dutch Boer.
But the man who has cause to rejoice the most,—and who as far as I could learn is wide awake to the fact,—is the Boer himself. He is an owner of land,—and on the first of January 1877 his land was hardly worth having. Now he can sell it, and such sales are already being made. He was all astray even as to what duty required of him. Ought he to pay his taxes when no one around him was paying? Of what use would be his little contribution? Therefore he did not pay. And yet he had sense enough to know that when there are no taxes, then there can be no government. Now he will pay his taxes. Ought he to have fought, when those wretched Natives, in their audacity, were trying to recover the land which he had taken from them? Of what use could fighting have been when he had no recognised leader,—when the next Boer to him was not fighting? Now he knows that he will have a leader. Why cultivate his land, or more of it than would feed himself? Why shear his sheep if he could not sell his wool? Now there are markets for him. It was to this condition of not paying, not fighting, and not working that he was coming when British annexation was suggested to him. He could not himself ask to be expatriated; but it may well be understood that he should thoroughly appreciate the advantage to himself of a measure for which as a Dutchman he could not ask. What was wanted was money and the credit which money gives. England had money and the Boer knew well enough that English money could procure for him that which a national flag, and a gold coinage, and a code of laws, and a promised railway could not achieve. It was almost cruel to ask him to consent to annexation, but it would have been more cruel not to annex him.
But the condition of the fourth party is to be considered. That fourth party is the annexing country. It may be very well for the Natives and for the Dutch, and for the English in the Transvaal, but how will it suit the English at home? It became immediately necessary for us to send a large military force up to the Transvaal, or to its neighbourhood. Something above two regiments have I believe been employed on the service, and money has been demanded from Parliament for the purpose of paying for them. Up to this time England has had to pay about £125,000 for the sake of procuring that security of which I have spoken. Why should she pay this for the Boers,—or even for the English who have settled themselves among the Boers? And then the sum I have named will be but a small part of what we must pay. Hitherto no violent objection has been made at home to the annexation. In Parliament it has been almost as well received by the Opposition as by the Government. No one has said a word against Lord Carnarvon; and hardly a word has been said against Sir Theophilus. But how will it be when other and larger sums are asked for the maintenance of the Transvaal? Surely some one will then arise and say that such payments are altogether antagonistic to our colonial policy,—by which our Colonies, as they are required to give nothing to us, are also required to support themselves.
The answer to this I think must be that we have been compelled thus to deviate from our practice and to put our hands deeply into our pockets by our folly in a former generation. It is because we came to a wrong judgment of our position in 1852,—when we first called upon the Dutch Boers to rule themselves,—that we are now, twenty-five years afterwards, called upon to pay for the mistake that has since occurred. We then endeavoured to limit our responsibility, saying to ourselves that there was a line in South Africa which we would not pass. We had already declined to say the same thing as to Natal and we ought to have seen and acknowledged that doctrine of the house on fire as clearly then as we do now. The Dutch who trekked across the Vaal were our subjects as much as though they were English. Their troubles must ultimately have become our troubles,—whereas their success, had they been successful, might have been as troublesome to us as their troubles. We repudiated two territories, and originated two Republics. The first has come back upon our hands and we must pay the bill. That is the Transvaal. The other, which can pay its own bill, will not come back to us even though we should want it. That is the Orange Free State. I have now answered the three questions. I think the annexation was justifiable. I think that it has been justified by the circumstances that have followed it. And I have given what in my opinion has been the cause for so disagreeable a necessity.
There is one other matter to be mentioned,—that delicate matter to which I have alluded. A report has been spread all through South Africa that the late President of the South African Republic is to be gratified by a pension of £750 per annum out of the revenues of Great Britain. I trust for every one’s sake that that report may not be true. The late President was the chief officer of his country when the annexation was made, and I cannot think that it would be compatible with his honour to receive a pension from the Government of the country which has annihilated the Republic over which he had been called on to preside. When he says that he yielded and remonstrated he takes a highly honourable position and one which cannot be tarnished by any incapability for ruling which he may have shown. But were he to live after that as a pensioner on English bounty,—the bounty of the country which had annihilated his own,—then I think that he had better at least live far away from the Transvaal, and from the hearing of the sound of a Dutchman’s voice.
And why should we pay such a pension? Is it necessary that we should silence Mr. Burgers? Have we done him an injustice that we should pay him a compensation for the loss of his office? It is said that we pay dethroned Indian Princes. But we take the revenues of dethroned Indian Princes,—revenues which have become their own by hereditary descent. Mr. Burgers had a month or two more of his Presidency to enjoy, with but little chance of re-election to an office the stipend of which could not have been paid for want of means. But this argument ought not to be required. An expensive and disagreeable duty was forced upon us by a country which could not rule itself, and certainly we should not convict ourselves of an injustice by giving a pension to the man whose incompetence imposed upon us the task. I trust that the rumour though very general has been untrue.